Performance enhancement of RF wideband power amplifier by reconfigurable matching networks

Abstract

The efficiency-linearity tradeoff is a very challenging aspect in the design of RF front-ends. An optimized process for both linearity and efficiency performance improvement using a reconfigurable matching network (RMN) for wideband power amplifiers (PAs) is presented. Long-term evolution (LTE) waveforms modeled as multisine excitations are used to simulate a general purpose PA, assuming that the antenna is perfectly matched. Power added efficiency (PAE) is strongly improved by selecting properly RMN state at the same time as linearity also increases. Furthermore, the adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) is improved whilst obtaining efficiency enhancement when selecting the optima RMN state for linearity. Both linearity and efficiency are improved simultaneously with this architecture.